Milk Pumping

Milk Pumping – Variable Speed Drives (VSD) can also be used on milk pumps to control the flow of milk through a precooler or heat exchanger to increase their cooling efficiency. A constant speed milk pump can pump milk at a rate of 30 gallons per minute (gpm) or more. In order to get maximum cooling of the milk, the water to milk flow rate needs to be 1:1 so a minimum of 30 gpm of water would be needed. However, many precoolers require a water:milk ratio of 2:1 so 60 gpm of water would be needed. Many older farms do not have this kind of water system capacity, therefore one option is to install a VSD controller on the milk pump to lower the average milk flow through the precooler. This reduces the water demand (gpm) need to achieve maximum efficiency from the precooler.